


Free

by rosekings



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, but it exists now, the stoncy is there if you squint hard enough, what is hawkins hill?? i don't know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 21:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13175130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosekings/pseuds/rosekings
Summary: Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan celebrate Steve's last day in Hawkins before he heads off to college.





	Free

**August, 1985**

The creased white paper sits between them like an eleven-inch mountain. Nancy twists her ring around and around her finger, staring at the sheet.

“Come on, Nance…you knew it was coming,” Steve says across the table. Nancy shrugs, not entirely sure she did.

“All the way to Ohio, though?” She meets his eyes, heart heavier than she thought it would be. “I mean, I’m thrilled you got in,” she says, gesturing to the acceptance letter in front of her, “but Ohio State is a long way away.”

“It’s just right next door.” She shrugs again. Steve leans across the table, grabbing her hand. “I’ll come visit on holidays and in the summer. I can’t - I can’t stay here with my parents, Nance.”

Nancy takes a deep breath and nods her head. She gets it. “When do you leave?”

Steve hesitates for a moment. “Tomorrow. Tonight if I can swing it.”

“ _Tomorrow?_ And you’re _just now_ telling me?”

“I didn’t want you to worry about losing my pretty face all summer.”

Nancy sighs, leaning back in her seat. “Well, let’s do something before you go. Something fun.” Steve raises an eyebrow, grinning, and she swats his hand. “Not that, creep. Come to Hawkins Hill this evening.”

“All right.” Steve sets some bills on the table and they leave the diner, stepping into Hawkins’ August heat. Nancy’s about to get into her car when Steve yells at her across the lot.

“Bring Jonathan tonight!”

She pauses, startled by the odd request. Sure, Steve and Jonathan got along fine, but they never specifically asked for the other’s presence. “If that’s what you want,” she answers.

“Yeah. See you later, Nance.”

“See you.”

* * *

Hawkins Hill, one of Nancy’s favorite spots, is more like a cliff that overlooks all of Hawkins. Steve turns up his car’s radio when Nancy and Jonathan arrive that evening, grinning at them.

“Let’s celebrate my last day in this town full of bad luck, huh?”

The three of them spend _hours_ doing whatever the hell they want on that hill. Nancy gives Jonathan a flower crown that she braided on the spot and Steve attempts a backflip and fails spectacularly. They sing along to whatever comes on the radio - all three of them dance with each other, Jonathan spinning Nancy a million miles an hour and Steve grabbing Jonathan’s hand to dip him. Jonathan smiles the widest Nancy’s ever seen, and she manages to steal his camera to snap a picture of it. They tell jokes and talk about the future that none of them have really planned out and laugh until their sides hurt. The sun sets, casting a light show of pinks, purples, and oranges over them. Nancy’s positive she has a hundred mosquito bites but every single one of them is worth it - she’s never had more fun.

It’s completely black and blue outside when they collapse on the edge of the hill, laying back in the grass to stare at the stars. Jonathan leans over to kiss Nancy, deeply and as if they’ve got all the time in the world. She can taste their stolen bottles of whiskey on his lips.

“The kids are going to kill me,” Steve notes. Jonathan pulls away from Nancy but keeps their hands entwined. For some reason that Nancy doesn’t want to bother puzzling out right then, she laces her right hand through Steve’s left so that the three of them are linked together.

“Yeah, they are,” Jonathan says. “Will thinks you’re a cooler babysitter than I am. He’s probably right.”

Nancy lifts the last bottle to her lips and finishes it off, savoring the burn down her throat. “I can’t believe you’re leaving Hawkins, Steve.”

“Me neither. But it’ll be good.” He sounds like he’s still trying to convince _himself_ of that fact.

“You’re leaving your nail bat with us, right?” Jonathan asks. Steve laughs.

“No way - you never know when I’ll need to kill an interdimensional monster, even in Ohio.”

The soft grass tickles Nancy’s cheeks as she looks up at the night sky covered in bright stars. They’ve never looked more beautiful to her. The three of them lay there in silence for quite a while, dreading the end of their magical evening, their fantastical escape from reality.

“We could just stay here,” Nancy whispers eventually. “All night.”

What she really means is that _Steve_ could stay there, instead of going to Ohio, but all of them know he can’t. He won’t. And Nancy doesn’t blame him - shitty parents suck to be around. She wonders how Jonathan feels about it. The two boys have become good friends since last November. Maybe even best friends, in the sense that even though they never hang out together without Nancy present, they agree that she’s more important than their differences, and they’ll always have each other’s backs in a monster attack.

“You two will be a lot better off without me interrupting you all the time,” Steve says, squeezing her hand.

“We never minded,” Jonathan says quietly.

They lay there for a minute longer, trying to evade the inevitable, but common sense gets the better of them eventually. Steve slowly gets up, brushing grass off himself. He extends a hand to Jonathan, helping him up, and then the two of them pull Nancy to her feet.

“It’s almost midnight and I’ve got a long way to go,” Steve says. A lump forms in Nancy’s throat and she tells herself not to cry, enveloping him in a hug. His ever-familiar scent winds around her as his fingers dig into her back.

“We’ll miss you,” she chokes out. “ _I’ll_ miss you.”

“Don’t cry over me, Nance,” he mumbles, so only she can hear. “I’ll miss you too. But you’ve got Jonathan and Mike and all your friends. You’ll be fine.”

Nancy swallows back a sob. She gives him a kiss on the cheek and then lets him go, her heart slowly tearing in half. She didn’t expect to feel this way about Steve leaving. She never expected to feel as if a part of her was breaking away.

She steps back to stand with Jonathan. Steve looks at the other boy and gives him a nod. “Don’t cry too hard for me, Byers.”

“As if. As soon as you leave, I’m throwing a party.”

“Yeah? You and what friends?” Steve’s expression sobers and for a moment he looks as if he wants to give Jonathan a hug but then decides against it. “You hurt a _hair_ on Nancy’s head -”

“I know. She’s fought Demogorgons - I think she can take me on herself.”

Steve laughs. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Jonathan smiles at him, wrapping an arm around Nancy’s shoulders. “Drive safe, Steve. Don’t be a stranger.”

Steve nods. “See you guys at Christmas.” In one quick movement, before Nancy can protest any more, he gets in his car, starts the engine, and takes off. He waves out his window, and Nancy and Jonathan watch until the red of his taillights disappear into the night. Once again, their summer is over.

“You know, he’s been willing to die for me and you, and for Mike and Will and their friends,” Nancy says, forcing the burning lump in her throat back down.

“Yeah.” Jonathan leaves her side to grab the empty bottles and trampled flower crowns and his camera. “He was a better person than I ever gave him credit for being.”

Nancy nods, still staring in the direction Steve left from, half hoping she’ll see his headlights coming back towards them, music spilling out of the windows at top volume.

“Hey, look at this.”

Nancy sighs and tears her eyes away from the road, going to join Jonathan at the trunk of his car. Sitting there, on top of all his camera equipment and schoolbooks, is the infamous nail bat. Jonathan picks up a sheet of paper sitting on top of it.

“ _To my two favorite people in this god-forsaken town,_ ” Jonathan reads. “ _Don’t go monster-hunting without me. P.S. - sorry for beating you up in that alley, Jonathan._ ”

Nancy laughs, the pain in her chest already starting to evaporate. For the first time in a long time, she feels _free,_ and she knows Jonathan and Steve do, too. She plucks the note from Jonathan’s hand, gives him a kiss, and shuts the trunk. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> So this started out as a thirty-word piece in a list of headcanons but I decided to develop it into something longer. Originally posted on my [Tumblr.](https://dustinhendrsn.tumblr.com/)


End file.
